I’m not sure about this. In the wake of Obama’s performance last week, in which he made the Republicans look bad by being reasonable and rational, a number of people are demanding the equivalent of the British Question Time here in the U.S.
It certainly would be good to institutionalize a procedure in which the president is forced to answer substantive questions, but you have to worry that by institutionalizing it we will inevitably make it into something that last week’s event was not: a forum for both sides to posture. I am a firm believer in the ability of politicians, especially Republicans, to drain substantive content out of anything. Remember, they were sort of ambushed last week. Obama’s people asked that it be televised, and they weren’t aware of what idiots they would look like. Republicans aren’t particularly smart, but they are quite adaptable and very disciplined, so you can be sure whatever we got would not resemble rational discourse.
Still, it might still be a marginal improvement over our current discourse. I only hope if it happens that the Congressional leadership, including the minority party leadership, has to stand up and justify itself as well.
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